In Oklahoma, the requirement usually is up to “algebra 2” - this is mostly domain and range, finding roots of polynomials, and logarithms.
IMHO, the world would be better if calculus was a required part of the high school curriculum. Like yeah, most people aren’t going to need the product rule in day to day life, but the fundamental ideas about rates of change seem like they’re something that everyone human deserves to be exposed to.
I don’t think rates of change or approaching a limit are things that an average person would find useful. I do think that some sort of statistics should be a requirement though, especially applied statistics.
No, and while I took calc in high school, I did fantastically bad at it.
When my brother had to do some word problems for his business classes, they were talking about coming up with splitting supply chains between products I realized some uses for it.
I think there are better ways to show it’s application than “if you are filling a pool and have two hoses, one that fills at x gallons and another that fills at y. How long would it take to fill with both hoses?”
For me, if they talked about using it for drag racing and comparing the time accelerating to top speed and time at top speed to complete a quarter mile the fastest, I might have cared.
It’s certainly possible to make it easier to understand and relatable, but I’m just saying that as far as useful things to know for all students, I think calculus is at the bottom of the list. On the other hand, nearly every single person will encounter some sort of statistics in their daily lives, and it is important to know how to interpret them.
I agree. Stats, z-scores, and significance would be way more useful. If only to offset how easy it is to lie with statistics.